NASA opens Space Apps Challenge

By Derek Major

Mar 24, 2016

NASA’s annual International Space Apps Challenge blasts off April 22-24. The main stage for the event will be in Pasadena, Calif., but local hackathons will take place simultaneously in 193 locations spanning more than 70 countries including Germany, Tunisia, Kenya, Brazil and Argentina.

More than 200 datasets, services and tools will be available to participants to work with on 26 challenges across six mission categories: Aeronautics, Earth, International Space Station, Space Technology, Journey to Mars, Solar System and Beyond. A data bootcamp will be streamed live from Pasadena on the first day of the challenge to help newcomers with introductory content on coding, dataset retrieval and manipulation, problem solving and storytelling.

The bootcamp is also an effort to get more women involved in coding.

“We’re reaching out to women’s organizations influential in the data and maker communities to participate, and we encourage women-led teams in the hackathon,” Deborah Diaz, NASA's CTO for information technology, said.